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TEFL A-Z

How to Plan a TEFL Lesson

Written by Keith Taylor
Last updated on 17 June, 2022

What is a lesson plan, do we need one, and what should it

include?

Why plan lessons?

Every TEFL lesson needs a plan. The level of detail it contains, and whether it is mainly in
your head or mainly on paper, will vary depending on your training and experience, the type
of class (one-to-one classes often have a much more �uid plan, for example) and the time
that you have available to plan.

The main reason to have a plan for a TEFL lesson is to know, �rstly, the aim of your lesson
and, secondly, what you’re going to do during the lesson in order to achieve that aim. If you
don’t know what you want your students to be able to do by the end of the lesson, you risk
them going away feeling that they haven’t achieved anything.

What should a TEFL lesson plan include?

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Everything that you might want to include in your plan derives from the main aim and how
you’re going to achieve it. What materials do you need for the activities that you’ve planned
in order to achieve your aim? How long will each of these activities take? What problems
might your students have in dealing with a particular activity or language point? And so on.

As we said, for most teachers it is impractical to plan every lesson with this amount of
detail. But these kinds of detail should at the very least be in your head, even if the paper
version is just a few scribbled lines – and writing a few plans in this way is the best way to
get yourself into the habit of thinking about these kinds of detail when you’re planning, even
if you don’t have the time to actually write them.

Although there are other possibilities, here’s a list of the main things to include in a detailed
lesson plan:

Main aim
Subsidiary aims
Personal aims
Materials
Anticipated problems and solutions

And for each stage of the lesson itself:

Timing
Stage aims
Activities
Focus

We’ll have a look at each one more closely. At the end is an example plan for this Used to
lesson.

Main aim

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What should the main aim be? Ideally it should come from a course plan
Loginwhich outlines a

logical progression of aims for every lesson in a course. How does this lesson that you’re
teaching today �t into the bigger picture of what your students want or need to achieve on
the course? The aim might be based on a language point (grammatical, lexical or
phonological), or it might be based on a skill (reading, writing, listening or speaking).

The key is to think not in terms of what you want to teach, but in terms of what you want
your students to be able to do. By thinking from your students’ perspective you are more
likely to choose activities which will help them achieve this aim, rather than activities which
are easy for you to teach. If your aim is grammar or vocabulary based, you also avoid the
risk of “teaching” the form and then thinking “okay, they’ve got it, job done”.

So, instead of “to teach will and going to” or “to practice listing for gist” try “to enable
students to discuss future plans using will and going to” or “to develop students’ ability to
identify the main ideas in a reading text”. Think along the lines of “to help / to enable / to
develop/ to improve…” rather than “to teach / to practice”.

It’s also a good idea to make a note of how you will recognise when your students have
achieved the main aim. This can help you afterwards to critically analyse your lesson, think
about ways to improve it if they didn’t achieve the aim, and decide what further work is
needed on a particular language point or skill.

Downloadable worksheets
Download free grammar worksheets, games and activities to
use in the classroom.

Subsidiary aims
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Subsidiary aims
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You may also have some secondary aims that you would like to work on. In the “Used to”
lesson below the main aim is based on a language point, but we do some listening work to
provide the context for presenting this language, so we take the opportunity to develop the
students’ listening skills. We also introduce some vocabulary, not just because we need it to
understand the text, but because we would like our students to be able to use this
vocabulary outside the lesson.

Personal aims

You might also have something that you want to achieve on a more personal level. Maybe in
your last lesson you weren’t happy with your board work and you want to improve on this. If
there are several aspects of your teaching that you want to improve or develop, try focusing
on one at a time here – work on it for a few lessons until you’re happy with it, then move on
to the next one.

Materials

What materials will you need for each of your activities? Make sure you won’t need to run
back to the photocopier during the class by going through all the stages of your lesson one
by one – have you forgotten anything?

Anticipated problems and solutions

Take a little time to go through the stages of your lesson and anticipate the problems your
students may have and what you will do if these problems crop up. Anticipating the
unexpected allows you to, as far as is possible, avoid the danger of being left stranded
without an answer. This can help you feel more con�dent and deliver a more effective
lesson.

Think in terms of vocabulary in a text that you may have to pre-teach in some way, potential

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issues with pronunciation and how you’re going to deal with them, possible lack of student
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imagination in creative tasks, possible confusion of tenses and how you’re going to resolve
this, and so on. It’s important to be precise here. If you say “students may be unfamiliar with
some words in the text” it doesn’t really help you to prepare a solution. If you say “students
may be unfamiliar with the words “to give up, to quit…”, you can think about the best way to
present or elicit the meaning of each.

Stages of the lesson

Now we come to the lesson itself. There are four things to consider here:

Timing

Your lesson has a �xed length and so you’ll need to think about the timing of each activity.
This helps you to know that you have planned a long enough lesson, and during the lesson
itself will serve as a self-check to make sure you achieve what you want to achieve. If you
�nd that you haven’t planned enough material, make sure any new activities you add
contribute to your lesson aim – avoid the temptation to crow-bar in activities that don’t
really �t. You could also go back and think about the activities you already have – could you
expand on them or change them in any way?

Stage aims

These are the aims of the individual stages of your lesson, as opposed to the main aim of
the lesson as a whole. There should be a logical progression here towards achieving the
main aim. Stage aims should answer the question “Why am I doing this?” rather than “What
am I doing?” – the answer to this second question comes in the next column.

The stages that you include in your lesson will depend, of course, on the type of lesson. The
“Used to” lesson follows a traditional PPP (presentation, practice, production) model. We
therefore expect to see a stage where the language is presented in some way. This could be

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a situational presentation, a presentation from a text, or one of a number of different

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techniques to present new language. We also expect to see some practice stages, probably
some restricted followed by some freer practice. These stages could be either oral or
written. Finally, we expect to see a production stage or, as we have called it in this lesson,
authentic practice.

Activity

This is what you actually do at each stage of the lesson. Be speci�c here. Instead of “Look
at and discuss pictures”, break it down and say exactly how you’re going to do this:
“Students look at photos of children doing things; Students discuss in pairs whether or not
they did these things in the past and whether or not they do them now”. Being this speci�c
will help keep you on track and ensure that you don’t forget a crucial part of an activity.

Focus

This tells you whether the activity is pair-work (S-S), group work (S-S-S), a teacher-led
activity (during the presentation stage, for example – T-Ss) and so on. This can show you
whether or not you have a range of different activity types – is your lesson too teacher-
centred? Is every activity pairwork? Have you mixed up the groups for different activities?

Here’s the used to lesson plan:

Main aim

• To develop students’ ability to talk about past habits using used to in the context
of childhood and addictions.
• Students will, during the less restricted practice stage, use the target language
with su�cient accuracy for their partner to understand their past habits.

Subsidiary aims

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• To develop students’ ability to listen for the main ideas in a text.
• To improve students’ ability to talk about the topic of addictions by introducing an
addiction lexical set.

Personal aims

• Give students more time to discuss in pairs after a listening activity before
feedback.

Materials

• Realia – chocolate, cigarettes, coffee, a PC

• Pictures or short video clips of children playing on swings, dressing up for
Halloween, studying at school.
• Listening CD and photocopies of tapescript from Language To Go Intermediate
(Longman, 2002) lesson 11.
• Photocopies of handout for each student.

Anticipated problems and solutions

• Problem: Students may be unable to think of three things they did as a child but
don’t do now on the spur of the moment.
Solution: Provide prompts and examples if necessary.
• Problem: Students will not be familiar with “to give up”, to quit”, “to cut down on” in
the listening text.
Solution: Elicit these items in the context of addictions.
• Problem: Students will be unfamiliar with the pronunciation of “used to” – /juːstə/
Solutuon: Drill in a�rmative, negative and question forms

Timing Aims Activity Focus

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Timing Aims Activity Focus

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8 mins Lead in • Ss look at photos of children

to set the context for the doing things
lesson and generate interest • Ss discuss whether or not
they did these things in the
past and whether or not they
S-S-S
do them now
• Ss write three things they did
as a child but don’t do now
and give them to T

7 mins Lexis • Ss look at coffee, cigarettes,

to introduce vocabulary for chocolate and a PC
listening stage • Ss discuss whether or not
they use these things, how
often, and whether they can S-SS-ST-
stop Ss
• T elicits addict, addicted,
addiction, to quit, to give up,
to cut down on, willpower

10 Listening • Ss listen to four people

mins to practise listening for gist describing their addictions:
Does the person have the
same addiction as you? If not,
SSs-T
what are they addicted to;
Have they given up?
• Feedback on board

12 Presentation

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mins
• T elicits target language:-
Login Did
 
he smoke in the past? Yes-
Once or many times? Many
• to introduce target
times- Does he smoke now?
language
No“He used to smoke”
• to manipulate form Ss-T
• T repeats with other examples
• to provide restricted
and elicits negative and
practice in using target
question
language and
• T drills target language
standardise
pronunciation

10 Less restricted practice • T writes on board one thing

mins to give students restricted that each student used to do
practise in using target as a child
language • Ss circulate, asking each T-SsS-
other questions to �nd out S-SSs-T
who used to do what
• Feedback

3 mins Less resticted written • Sts write 2 sentences about

practice themselves and two about
to provide a written record of other sts using target
S
the target language language
• Feedback

10 Authentic practice • T gives handout with prompts

mins to give students authentic – last house, last job,
practice in using target appearance 10 years ago
language • Ss circulate and ask and
S-S-S
answer questions based on

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answer questions based on

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prompts
• Feedback

This lesson follows a typical PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production) model. With this
model we �rst present or elicit the language in some way. The students then practise it in
more or less controlled situations and �nally produce it in a more authentic situation. Have
a look below for more about these practice and production stages.

PPP is just one of several possible lesson models – as such we have not covered all of the
possible lesson stage types and have only touched on some of the terminology that you
might include in these stages. But we’ll expand on some of the terminology and stages that
we have mentioned in more detail here:

Lead in

A lead in activity is designed to “warm the students up” – to generate interest and get them
thinking about the topic. When you introduce a topic, for example with pictures, a video or
some questions, you activate in your students’ minds a mental image or expectation based
on their existing knowledge of the topic. This mental image is often called a schema, and
so we can say that the aim of a lead-in stage is to “activate your students’ schemata”. Your
students’ existing knowledge and experience can then be used to personalise the lesson.

Target language

The aim of the presentation stage is to present or elicit the target language – the language
that we want the students to be able to use correctly in order to achieve the aim of our
lesson. There are different ways to do this – in this case the teacher elicits the meaning of
the target language with a series of concept questions before giving the target sentence
itself.

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Manipulating form

By this we mean that the teacher presents (or elicits) the question and negative forms of
the target language, as well as, perhaps, other examples in the �rst, second or third person.

Restricted/controlled practice

The �rst practice stage, where the teacher drills the pronunciation of the target language, is
very restricted, in the sense that students focus entirely on the sentence containing the
target language. There is no opportunity at this stage to incorporate other language. The
practice stage of PPP lessons tends to start with restricted practice in this way, and then
gradually move on to less restricted and eventually much more authentic practice.

In the less restricted practice stage of this lesson, students are given the chance to
circulate and ask each other questions (using the material that was gathered during the
lead in). The focus is still very much on the target language, but much less restricted or
controlled than the previous exercise.

Authentic/Free/Fluency practice

Finally, the students are given the opportunity to produce the target language in a much
freer context. The activity in this lesson encourages them to talk about the past, and they
may naturally use the target language during their conversations, but they are also free to
use other language. There shouldn’t be any pressure on the students at this stage to use
the target language, and you may �nd that they don’t use it very much at all. This is why we
can call this stage authentic practice – in an authentic situation we wouldn’t use “used to”
in every sentence when communicating with someone – we would maybe use it once or
twice in addition to other forms.

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Keith is the co-founder of Eslbase. He has been a teacher and teacher trainer for over 20 years,
in Indonesia, Australia, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Poland, France and now in the UK.

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questions

Comments

Nat 16 January, 2015

I am a CELTA student and I have to say that this LP is excellent and inspirational! a great
reference to come back for ideas! thank you so much!

Reply

Jeremias Rui Albino 11 May, 2019

Great. This is one of the clearest PPP Lesson Plans I’ve ever seen.

Reply

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Cara 29 April, 2015

Hi, this Grammar Lesson Plan is excellent. Is it possible for me to obtain a copy by email? This
is the best plan I have seen for a long time.

Reply

esl base 29 April, 2015

Hi Cara, thanks for your comment! Unfortunately we’re unable to send this by email – you’re
welcome to copy and paste from this page though!

Reply

Ahmadjon 24 May, 2022

Hi! Thanks for letting us copy and paste it

Reply

Jose fermin 29 April, 2015

This is a very detailed PPP lesson plan. I’m a CELTA trainee and thought it was awesome!

Reply

Eslbase 3 September, 2015

Thanks Jose, we’re glad you found it helpful.

Reply

Eduardo 16 July, 2015

Hi, this is a great example of lesson plan. Would it be ok if we used in our training sessions at
our school?

Reply

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Eslbase 3 September, 2015

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Hi Eduardo – please feel free to use this for your training sessions.

Reply

kimberly 15 August, 2015

I am a teacher trainer and I found this guide to be a very clear resource. THANK YOU!

Reply

Eslbase 3 September, 2015

Thanks Kimberly for your feedback.

Reply

zbd 7 September, 2015

I’d say an important stage was missing – �nal feedback! Students want to know what they did
well/badly on in the �nal task as well as checking that they have the ‘right’ answers in more
controlled practice. Other than that, a sound lesson plan for CELTA candidates. I did CELTA over
7 years ago and would have appreciated this then :)

Reply

Eslbase 8 September, 2015

Thanks for pointing this out zbd – we missed off the bullet point for “Feedback” for the last
two activities. I’ve added these now.

Reply

Margarita 12 January, 2023

Hi , I am writing my graduation paper on ESL lesson stages and lesson time management,
and , I’d point out that you did a �ne job and didn’t miss anything. The PPP lesson planning
paradigm doesn’t require evaluation, which is by all means required by 5E Instructional
Model: engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate. So, probably, that is the reason you

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omitted feedback, which is optional in PPP.

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Reply

Melanie 8 September, 2015

This is very helpful – good to get it from a different perspective rather than just passing the
course basis – thank you

Reply

Abdul Rahim Chaudhary 5 April, 2016

Awesome! But it is not here to select the �nal stages I.e. Controlled practice and production
stage. Edit it please so we could copy and past for print. Thanks

Reply

peter 22 July, 2016

Well explained. What about demos and language analysis, when or on what stage must it be
engaged?

Reply

Holona Chetty 1 August, 2016

Well I like to say I paid money for a TEFL course which has everything that you mentioned (for
free) .Thanks for sharing!

Reply

Diana 9 November, 2016

Many thanks for this clear presentation of the lesson plan. Just preparing for my �rst TP!

Reply

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pamela 11 January, 2017

Thank you so much well explained.

Reply

pamela 11 January, 2017

Hi, am doing am assignment on a lesson and not lesson plan. The question is what are the four
stages of a lesson and their activites. Please help.

Reply

Niva 1 August, 2017

An excellent grammar lesson plan! I’m a TEFL student, and in fact, my �eld is not teaching, am
a translator, so please I need your help for a detailed plan: Main aim: lexis, sub aim: speaking.
Thank u in advanced!

Reply

Faye Simon 21 August, 2017

I am a TESOL student and getting ready for my practicum lessons. I was very nervous and felt
like i have all the information jumbled up in my head. But this detailed lesson plan, step by step
scaffolding and checklist is perfect! Thank you!

Reply

azra 7 November, 2017

i plan to do celta and found this lesson plan extremely well planned and organised.just great….

Reply

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cherell 20 March, 2019

Good Day
I am struggling with the TEFL lesson plan that i must draw up. It should have the following
stages. 1. Warmer, Pre teach vocab,and reading.

Reply

Eslbase 27 March, 2019

Hi Cherell – can you give us some more info about the plan?

Reply

eve peter 18 April, 2019

Hi Eslbase, good morning. I am doing my TEFL Training Course and I have come across your
website and I �nd it very useful for my assignments. Thanks a bunch for this.

Reply

Eslbase 26 April, 2019

Hi Eve, thanks for your comment, and we’re glad you �nd the site useful!

Reply

Shanitha 14 March, 2020

I am also a te� student and and doing a lesson plan on comprehension Finding it a bit
di�cult. Please help. Thanks

Reply

James Tringle 23 June, 2019

I am just got through teaching in several public schools in Vietnam over the past year. I

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basically used the lesson plans from “Family and friends” to teach theLogin
classes. Oh by the way I
had an average of 55+ kids in each class.

Reply

Taurus 3 February, 2020

How can we check the effectiveness of the presentation stage, how can we take student
feedback?

Reply

Eslbase 18 February, 2020

Hi Taurus

Checking understanding of the language as you present it is very important. In this lesson it is
done with concept checking questions, in this part of the plan:

“Did he smoke in the past? Yes- Once or many times? Many times- Does he smoke now? No
“He used to smoke
T repeats with other examples”

You can see some more detail about this in this post about the lesson:
https://www.eslbase.com/teaching/used-to-lesson-plan

…and in this post about concept checking questions: https://www.eslbase.com/te�-

a-z/concept-questions

Hope that helps.

Reply

Spastic-Tactician 11 March, 2020

I love the emphasis on thematic connection between lesson stages. I train public school
teachers in Japan and the most important thing I do for them is to help them begin to plan the
connections in their lessons, their units, and their terms. Student motivation is a fragile thing.
Creating and maintaining engaging thematic connections that carry through every stage, every
activity, each one informing the next and building on the previous is absolutely crucial to
supporting that motivation. Textbooks don’t provide this kind of goal-focused thematic

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connection. It can only come from the dedicated preparation of the teacher.
Login Your section about
the importance of putting the work in before lessons is, as such, a super important part of this
article.
One suggestion: I am not a fan of calling the �nal stage “production”. Production is a word that
carries a machine-like, robotic connotation and… alarmingly, that is exactly what I often see in
the �nal stages of lessons I observe. Students robotically spitting out what they think they
should say. I prefer calling the �nal stage “Use” (My preferred acronym is SPU, Show, Practice,
Use). When we think in terms of having students actually USE language or communicative
strategies, rather than simply producing them, we sharpen our aim when choosing or designing
activities. This subtle change in thinking can help us think about language as a communicative
device rather than as a barrier to overcome for students, and THAT is key.

Reply

Patrick Serge MONGBO 20 December, 2020

So happy to have these cues on lesson planning. Very simple understandable and useful for
teachers especially beginners. Pat Serge te� Inspector

Reply

Mona 30 March, 2021

That was clear and well explained. Thank you

Reply

Maisaa Dahdal 18 September, 2021

Very useful. Many thanks.

Reply

Yasmine Almokhtar 18 September, 2021

It’s well organized and so helpful, thank you so much for this clari�cation

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It’s well organized and so helpful, thank you so much for this clari�cation
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Reply

Gordon Ross 24 January, 2022

Thank you for this. I am currently studying to be a TEFL teacher, and I’m glad I have found your
website. The information you are sharing is very clear and well explained.

Reply

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